At least eight people
have died in the state from the flooding,
and one person is missing and presumed dead
in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

To the west of Atlanta,
Douglas County was particularly hard hit
with six people confirmed dead.

The latest victim was a
young adult male found dead in the northwest
of the county, said Wes Tallon, county
spokesman for the emergency management
agency.

The death was an
"obvious flash flood death," Tallon said,
adding that the body was found with a
vehicle downstream from a roadway.

Parts of northwest and
south central Georgia, as well as the metro
Atlanta area, were still under a flash flood
watch Tuesday night. Standing water remained
throughout parts of Atlanta.

But CNN meteorologists
said the heavier rain had shifted west of
the hardest hit areas in Georgia. They
expected significant rain in parts of
Mississippi and Louisiana, where the ground
was saturated by the earlier storms that
moved up from the Gulf of Mexico to cover
the southeast.

But slow draining waters
Tuesday left portions of highways I-285 and
I-20 on the city's west side still closed
Tuesday night, and several state roads in
the area were closed because of flooding, or
bridges and roadways washed away.

Georgia Gov. Sonny
Perdue pleaded Tuesday with residents to
stay off roads, noting that nearly all the
fatalities so far were drivers and
passengers swept away by the floodwater.

"Stuff is important but
it's not nearly as important as your life,"
he said. "Please give these waters time to
recede."

Perdue said he planned
to ask President Obama to declare a federal
emergency in
Georgia. The governor has declared
states of emergency in 17 flood-stricken
counties. Until just a few months ago, the
area was gripped by drought.

Schools in the Atlanta
metro area were closed Tuesday as some
isolated storms soaked areas around the
city. The rains were not as widespread or
heavy as they were Monday.

In Douglas County, some
of the flooding victims spoke to family
members while trapped inside their vehicles.

"She said that the
vehicle was being taken by water, that it
was starting to take the car," said Lori
Jones, whose niece, Delena Waters, died in
the flooding. She spoke to CNN affiliate WSB-TV.

"The last thing they
heard was that she was floating away."

Another victim's
relative had a similar story:

"His girlfriend was
talking to him at 12:30 last night, he said,
'I'm on Pool Mill Road, water's flooding in
my car, I cannot get it open,'" the relative
told WSB-TV. "He said 'I gotta call 911' and
then his phone went dead."

Emergency management
spokesman Tallon also reported an adult
woman found dead downstream from a car that
had washed off the roadway.

One group in the county
was more fortunate. County emergency
director Jason Milhollin told CNN that a car
was swept off the road during the morning
commute, and four other people who tried to
rescue the driver were also swept away. All
five were later rescued, he said.

"They were fine, no one
went to the hospital," Milhollin said.
"Luckily they had a fence to hold on to and
we got the boat to them."

Elsewhere, a 2-year-old
boy and a 39-year old woman were killed. The
toddler died when he was ripped from his
father's arms by fast-moving floodwater as
the father struggled to hold onto bushes,
officials in Carroll County, also west of
Atlanta, said.

Seydi Burciaga, 39, was
swept off a road in Lawrenceville in
Gwinnett County, east of Atlanta, when flash
flooding trapped her in her vehicle,
Gwinnett County police said.

She called 911 and
police tried to locate her, but Burciaga
could not tell them exactly where she was.
Floodwater moved her minivan about 500
feet after she was swept off the roadway,
and her attempts to guide rescuers by
mentioning landmarks were unsuccessful,
police said.

By the time rescuers
found the minivan, she was dead.

Some areas west of
Atlanta have received more than 22 inches of
rain since last week, nearly half of that
falling from Sunday night to Monday morning.

After Georgia creeks and
rivers burst, swollen by days of rain,
residents struggled to escape.

An additional death was
reported likely in Tennessee, where a
presumed drowning victim was forced into a
culvert, or underground storm water drain,
Sunday evening, Chattanooga Fire Department
spokesman Bruce Garner said. Sylvester
Kitchens Jr., 46, was with friend Albert
Miller when they decided to swim in a large,
flooded ditch, Garner said. He said a Miller
family member told him that "basically, it
was a bet."

Both managed to grab a
chain-link fence while being buffeted by the
strong current, Garner said. A neighbor
threw a garden hose for them to grab, and
Kitchens reached for it but couldn't hold
on. Miller clung to the fence for about 20
minutes and was eventually rescued by
firefighters, Garner said.

Kitchens' body has not been found, said
Garner, who added that it "doesn't appear he
could've survived."